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We stared at each other, and I don’t know if it showed on my face, or if it just occurred to him, too, or what, but he hesitated and smiled down at me. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

The question seemed so ridiculous that I laughed. “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve almost killed Damian twice. I thought controlling the ardeur would make things easier, and it hasn’t. I had intercourse with Byron, Byron, of all people. I almost raised the entire cemetery tonight. I could feel it, like some army of the dead just waiting for me to wake it. I could feel it, Nathaniel, feel the power of it.” I was crying and hadn’t meant to be. “So much went wrong today.”

He kissed my tears as they slipped from my eyes, gently, so gently. “Let’s make something go right.” He kissed me, and the salt of my tears lay on his lips.

“But . . .”

He kissed me again, a little more forcibly. “Anita, please stop talking.”

I frowned up at him. “Why?”

“So we can fuck,” he said.

I opened my mouth, and don’t know what I would have said, because he spoke first, “Make love to me,” and he leaned over me, “consumate me,” I thought he was going to kiss me, but his lips moved lower, and he kissed the front of my neck, then moved a little lower, “screw me,” and he kissed the mound of my breast through the T-shirt, “suck me.” He raised the short shirt up, spilling my breasts free. I started to protest, but the look in his eyes, on his face, stopped me. He put his lips over my nipple, just below the bandage that covered Jean-Claude’s bite. He licked a long solid line over my breast and rolled his eyes to meet mine. “Fuck me.”

I’d like to say that I had something equally salacious to say, or something sauve, but for the life of me, the only thing I could think to say, was, “Okay.” It wasn’t sauve and debonair, but when you love someone, you don’t always have to be sauve and debonair, sometimes you can just be yourself, and okay said at the right moment is sweeter than any poetry and can mean more to someone than all the pillow talk in the world.

50

THE T-SHIRT AND undies went in the first rush of hands, but I’d never tried to touch him when it wasn’t a metaphysical necessity. I’d never just turned to Nathaniel because I wanted him. It wasn’t that I didn’t find him attractive. God knows I did, but I hadn’t realized until those first few moments how much I’d come to rely on the ardeur. I’d thought of it as only a curse, but I appreciated for the first time that it greased the wheels for me. It got me over the embarrassment, the awkwardness, the good-girls-don’t-do-this attitude. Without the ardeur, it was just me, and the inside of my head was ugly.

Nathaniel noticed, because he notices everything. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at me. “What’s wrong?”

I wasn’t sure how to say it, and that must have shown on my face, because he said, “Just say it, Anita, whatever it is.”

I looked up at him and fought the urge to gaze down the length of his body. I had to close my eyes, and finally said, “Without the ardeur, it’s just me. It’s just me, and I’m . . .” I sat up. “I’m not comfortable.”

“With me?”

I started to nod, then stopped, and said the real truth. “With myself.”

He moved forward on the bed so that he rested his face against the small of my back. He was so warm. “What does that mean, exactly?”

How did I explain something to someone else, that I didn’t really understand myself? “I don’t know if I can explain it,” I said.

The bathroom door opened, and we both looked up. Jason was there with a towel around his waist. He wasn’t wet, but he was wearing a towel. I’d been around the shapeshifters long enough to think that was odd.

“I can’t stand it,” he said, “I just can’t stand it.”

“What?” I said.

“You’re going to fuck this up.”

I looked at him, and it wasn’t a friendly look.

“Don’t glare at me.” He came to stand at the end of the bed, hands on hips. “I’ve told you that I’d give almost anything to have someone look at me the way Nathaniel looks at you.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“But nothing,” he said, “I thought you were growing,